[p2p-hackers] p2p in some place or other

[coderman]

On 12/12/05, Lally Singh <lally at vt.edu> wrote:
> ...
> IMHO, anonymity's pretty important to keep.  If there's going to
> be an identity system, let's make sure it doesn't attach to real
> people directly.  Ebay user IDs, which you can burn at any time,
> but become valuable due to good feedback, are nice.

agreed; anonymity and pseudonymity are important.  an ideal identity
management system would function like Ian Goldberg's nymity slider and
allow me to specify exactly how much information is revealed about my
person during any interactions with peers.

anonymous interactions would be useful for self certifying resources,
pull based operations, and public broadcasts for example.

psuedonymity for weakly trusted interactions, reputation attached to
recommendations or other meta data.

and strong identity for trusted relationships between friends /
associates where non trivial resources may be exchanged or formal
agreements negotiated.

likewise, the protocols used to communicate between peers would need
to take these nymity levels into account, and constrain or protect
communication accordingly.

i have to second Matthew Kaufman in that a lot of fun is to be had in
these areas; so much ties into these mechanisms (user interfaces,
protocols, social interactions, information security) that provides
fertile ground for experimentation and discovery across a diverse
range of interests.  trying to make such systems work in a fully or
partially decentralized manner makes it even more challenging (and fun
:)